Distribution of Responsibility for Climate Change within the Milieu

This article approaches the challenges of the distribution of responsibility for climate change on a local level using the framework of the milieu. It suggests that the framework of the milieu, inspired by Japanese and cross-cultural environmental philosophy, provides pathways to address the four challenges of climate change (global dispersion, fragmentation of agency, institutional inadequacy, temporal delay). The framework of the milieu clarifies the interrelations between the individual, the community, and the local milieu and is open to a conservative view of human communities and an inclusive view of multispecies communities. On this basis, an account of individual responsibility that is anchored in the local milieu and includes a responsibility to collaborate across milieus is developed. It consists of a forward-looking responsibility that balances a degree of contributory responsibility for one’s imprints on the milieu with a degree of capacity-responsibility that varies regarding the individual’s knowledge and powers, and the acceptability of practices within the local milieu.

Moral responsibility for computationally designed products

Computational design systems (such as those using evolutionary algorithms) can create designs for a variety of physical products. Introducing these systems into the design process risks creating a ‘responsibility gap’ for flaws in the products they are used to create, as human designers may no longer believe that they are wholly responsible for them. We respond to this problem by distinguishing between causal responsibility and capacity responsibility (the ability to be morally responsible for actions) for creating product designs to argue that while the computational design systems and human designers are both casually responsible for creating product designs, the human designers who use these systems and the developers who create them have capacity responsibility for such designs. We show that there is no responsibility gap for products designed using computational design systems by comparing different accounts of moral responsibility for robots and AI (instrumentalism, machine ethics, and hybrid responsibility). We argue that all three of these accounts of moral responsibility for AI systems support the conclusion that the product designers who use computational design systems and the developers of these systems are morally responsible for any flaws or faults in the products designed by these systems. We conclude by showing how the responsibilities of accountability and blameworthiness should be attributed between the product designers, the developers of the computational design systems.

Putting the age of criminal and tort liability into context: a dialogue between law and psychology

The concepts of ‘liability age’ and ‘capacity responsibility’ have been widely dissected by researchers in various fields. However, their application to both criminal and tort liability of children remains inconsistent. Furthermore, rarely has an interdisciplinary approach adequately dealt with these concepts and their impact on legal norms. This text investigates the notion of criminal and tort liability age in connection with the notion of capacity responsibility, in relation to children, and further questions the adequacy of the relevant legal norms. This endeavour to improve the applicable legal norms is supported by an analysis of the pertinent findings in the field of psychology, particularly in respect of the moral development of children. Informed by an excursion through the ideas of Piaget, Kohlberg, and Gilligan, among others, regarding the moral development of children, the text also serves to assess the impact of concepts of moral responsibility and maturity, in relation to the development of the legal norms, which determine the age of liability of children. The text concludes with a proposal for a criminal and tort liability age framework, based upon indicative/presumptive age milestones, and an integrated approach to all relevant circumstances in casu.

Dying to be responsible: adolescence, autonomy and responsibility

The United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Administration of Juvenile Justice state that there should be ‘a close relationship between the notion of responsibility for delinquent or criminal behaviour and other social rights and responsibilities’. If healthcare autonomy, or the ‘right to be responsible for making decisions about our own medical welfare’, is accepted as one of these social rights then, in England, the age gap between criminal responsibility and healthcare right is considerable. It has been suggested that this age difference might be explained in terms of the attribution of responsibility; in essence that there is a difference in the timing and nature of the responsibility being ascribed. The aim of this paper is to examine the concept of responsibility, particularly as it relates to adolescent decisions concerning death; the refusal of life-saving treatment, on the one hand, and the commission of homicidal acts, on the other. It would appear that there is considerable overlap in the types of responsibility alluded to in both situations, most particularly in the notions of capacity responsibility and prospective responsibility. If this is so, then having a wide gap between the two ages of responsibility would seem to lack a secure jurisprudential basis.

Putting the Age of Criminal and Tort Liability into Context: A Dialogue between Law and Psychology

The concepts of 'liability age' and 'capacity responsibility' have been widely dissected by researchers in various fields. However, their application to both criminal and tort liability of children remains inconsistent. Furthermore, rarely has an interdisciplinary approach adequately dealt with these concepts and their impact on legal norms. This text investigates the notion of criminal and tort liability age in connection with the notion of capacity responsibility, in relation to children, and further questions the adequacy of the relevant legal norms. This endeavour to improve the applicable legal norms is supported by an analysis of the pertinent findings in the field of psychology, particularly in respect of the moral development of children. Informed by an excursion through the ideas of Piaget, Kohlberg, and Gilligan, among others, regarding the moral development of children, the text also serves to assess the impact of concepts of moral responsibility and maturity, in relation to the development of the legal norms, which determine the age of liability of children. The text concludes with a proposal for a criminal and tort liability age framework, based upon indicative/presumptive age milestones, and an integrated approach to all relevant circumstances in casu.

Insanity and the Capacity for Criminal Responsibility

There are two different ways in which the insanity defence could he constructed. These relate to different ways in which the insanity defence might question the responsibility of the accused. Either the defence might show that the act in question was not performed in the appropriate way (that the accused lacks attribution-responsibility) or it might show that the agent was not an appropriate subject for criminal responsibility (that he or she lacks capacity-responsibility). Sometimes it is thought that these possibilities collapse into each other: it is only those that cannot perform their acts in the appropriate way that lack the capacity to be criminally responsible. This essay shows three things: first, that Scots criminal law, at least since the nineteenth century, is in a state of confusion between a capacity-responsibility conception of the defence and an attribution-responsibility conception. Second, that capacity-responsibility does not collapse into attribution-responsibility: there are some agents who are capable of forming mens rea but who ought not to be made criminally responsible due to their mental disorder. Third, that a sophisticated account of the capacity-responsibility conception can provide a version of the insanity defence that is both theoretically more elegant and practically more advantageous than the attribution-responsibility conception that has found favour in England and in some Scots decisions.